Platypus of Truth

In later years, did Bedwyr unclose his heart unto an aged brother as 'neath a smoking yew tree the twain reclined in the hour before the Vesper Bell would ring. And that good brother made record of all he learned that bards in after-years wrought into song and story. But one tale did he by word impart unto the father of Aenerin, whose son sang it thus when the the fires were lit in the high halls of Din Eiden, that Saxon fires made a name, and nothing more.  I There was in Gwynedd Vivian, enchantress. Born in battle was she- Blood born- In the sword-storm, in the raven’s feast Bold- she came to Arthur’s high hall. Spell-weaver, she joined with Medraud, King’s bane, unweaver, unnamer. Bold will I make to tell the tale. Bold will I make before the court. Bold will I make before the fire. Bold will I make to sing the song. When in time Vivian went wandering Down hidden paths Seeking secret knowledge, Merlin-masteries, She came, for her steps led her, Unto that tree-fast-prison. Wind....

Pleasant are the meads of Oxenford in Spring where clerks in ancient robes tell tales and dream. And one, whose fathers had been kings, sang this song to deer that grazed. In idle hour, an old Phoenician listening wrote it down, 'twixt thoughts of swaying cedars that are no more. Twelve are the hours of the Day and Night, Twelve the Months of the rounded Year. Twelve are the Apostles of our Christ, and Twelve the Battles of the King.  On Badon's hill did Arthur wear The Queen of Heaven on his shield, Forth in the front of war until "They break," quoth he and Glorious Dawn blazed her corona O're his head: a terror to the sons of Horse Who from the Maiden's image fled. The Cymry ruled for fifty years the Isle of the Britons bless'd, Till Medraud raised his banner 'i the North, and then the Bear came charging forth, to fight and die and live once more When Saxon dragons thunder. These words did Talliesin sing, Wrapped in the splendor of his Dream, While L...

In Fall, the trees from Lyonesse to Logres burn in Autumn flashes. So did the heart of Tristram as singing songs of Lancelot and the Queen he rode, thinking of Fair Isolt who late from Eire did come to Mark, the Cornish King. In the woodland glade at fragrant evening he met Dagonet, Arthur's Fool, skipping as a leaf to the burning music of his addled thought. "Skip ye then to my music, Sir Fool", he cried. And Dagonet did not but listen as the leaves waved and danced. "Like ye not my music," smiled the errant knight. "Ye skip well enough to music half as good." "Oh, thy music is fair enough", quoth the Fool, "But I can make a song as well as thou." And from the broken music of his mind, Dagonet echoed back a shadow of the song that Tristram made: In the pl ume of foaming splendor, past the fecund water reads, Shot the bark of fair Ettaine, Lilly-lady-fair Elaine, Whom the people of that region, Where the lady lost her reason, And ne...

These fragments I have shored against my ruins. -T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland There was once a Tiffany Glass factory in the town where I grew up.  I didn't know that.  It's in ruins now, but apparently you can still pick up handfuls of brightly colored glass if you know where to look. Brightly colored glass. From pieces of brightly colored glass came all the amazing works of the Tiffany studio.  I've seen them in Boston, Ohio, and even Redlands California.  Wherever I have seen them, Tiffany windows are remarkable for their beauty -and my home town played a part in the making of that beauty.  Much of the downtown is in ruins now and those ruins are slowly being cleared away in a decades-long process of urban renewal.  Whatever once flanked the downtown has been covered by the woods and is now a state park.  I don't know what will happen to the old glass works.  Maybe they've already been cleared away.  What is certain is that those piece...

I'll drink up all the mead that you got on your shelf But first let me introduce myself My name is Sin-Fee-Oat-Lee I like my poisons topical most-lee But if any a you want to go rounds with me I'll bust out my sword and make you Dee-Ee-Dee.

Who can catch a forest of falling leaves? I think every New Englander is born hearing the drumbeats of Armageddon.  Those drumbeats are always there with them: a sound in the back of their minds.  The sound rolls on, soft but steady, without a stop; always heard and so never heard.  Every New Englander is a Puritan in the end: Protestant, Catholic, Agnostic -even Atheist...  Sometimes those drumbeats rise to the fore, and then the quiet hills and meadows erupt.  Ask Sasacus, Philip, Gage, Lee... I think all of us have some intimation of the Eschaton.  It comes to us when we're not ready: the sudden crack of starry banners caught in a celestial wind.  Then we remember that we are in occupied territory; that we were meant to be more than what we are.  It comes most clearly in our dreams: the first time we fly among the clouds, the sword fight on the tips of the bamboo, the morning we drank from the Firefall and danced.  Look at our dreams, ...

It's another hot and green October in the American Southwest.  In Northern lands, the air is cooling and the leaves are changing while pumpkins ripen and cider mulls.  I caught a glimpse this summer of the old pumpkin patch.  Pumpkin picking was always fun -not to mention looking at all the weird and gnarly gourds.  If you could find the right place to stick those, they would dry and keep.  I never did find quite the right place.  Pumpkins occasionally got smashed.  More often they rotted and had to be unceremoniously chucked into the nearest patch of woods.  Still, their decaying bulk added that extra bit of color to that most colorful season. How much do I really remember, and how much is pictures and endless re-tellings of the same tired old stories?  Augustine thought that memory was a sign of the soul's distention in time.  How far can the members of one soul stretch?  How do I re-member?

There was a time when I stood at the top of my drive way on a boulder (it was the highest point I could find) and looked out across the valley all the way to Monroe.  It was Autumn, and the leaves were turning so that all the miles beneath me looked like a bowl of Halloween candy or a fire in a painting hanging on the wall.  That's a trite way of putting it.  Could you have been there, and felt what I felt you would know it for what it was: what Moses saw in the cleft of the rock, or Isaiah in the Temple: the oblique angle of the eschaton, the hem of the garment of the LORD.  But how does one catch hold of falling leaves?  It's not the passing garment of a Jewish rabbi.  If I can but touch the hem of his garment I will be clean.   How do I touch the hem of his garment? 

Utnapishtim sat upon his rock and his disciple stood at his feet and was listening to all the words that Utnapishtim was saying from out of his wisdom.  Now the time of afternoon meal came upon them and Utnapishtim bid his disciple to be seated on the grass.  Then he drew forth a fish and divided it with his disciple and bade him eat saying: "Eat of this fish, oh my disciple, for Utnapishtim would be as this fish and would you not be as Utnapishtim?  Now learn from this fish for it has its beginnings here in the waters of my Lake but when its youthly-vigor and its power come upon it then it follows the Great River to the Sea and becomes a creature of the Sea, but when the time comes it returns from the Sea even to the waters of the Lake where it was born.  Does it not know the Lake because it knows the Sea; does it not know the Sea because it knows the Lake; does it not know the Great River from striving against it?" Then the disciple of Utnapishtim was silent an...

And as the disciple of Utnapishtim stood before the seat of Utnapishtim he asked him to speak more of the sons of Arius and their great prophet and Utnapishtim answered him saying: "Have you heard what is said of that man?  Has the tale come down to you?  While walking in the paradise of the kings of Anshan did he not meet the image of himself?  Did you hear that he turned and bowed to it?  There is in this a kind of truth, for did he not instruct all the sons of Arius, and do they not do the same?  Oh ask yourself my student: is it not the mark of these men that even in paradise all they can bow to is their selves?" Thus Spoke Utnapishtim

Is Utnapishtim an ape?  Does he dance before you in the manner of an ape?  Laugh then.  Laugh at the dancing of Utnapishtim; he will not resent you.  Laugh until your sides crack and your head breaks; for through the gap may come Wisdom! Thus Spoke Utnapishtim

Utnapishtim spoke to his disciple, and his disciple listened to his wisdom; the wisdom of the time before the Flood: "Did you not hear that the gods sent the Flood to ravage all mankind because they were noisy, oh my disciple? Were you told upon your mother's knee that the world bellowed like a bull and the gods called down the Flood to silence it? The storm riders were let loose to drown their noise, and the depths were opened to silence their bellowing. Seven days it rained, and forty days the tempest raged upon the face of the earth. The gods hid in the highest heavens, and all things upon the earth became as clay. Better a lion than the Flood. Better a bull than the Flood. Better a plague than the Flood. Is that what you were told?" "There is a truth in these things. For then men were greater than they are now, and they had ears that were open to the call of Wisdom, and houses that were open to the wind. But men grew tired of Wisdom, and they were c...

A Fragment from Thus Spoke Utnapishtim : Now Utnapishtim sat upon his rock and his disciple sat at his feet, and he begged Utnapishtim to tell him of peoples and places, and of all that he had seen since the coming of the Flood. And Utnapishtim smiled and said: "I can remember the coming of Arius and his sons, for I saw them from my mountain, oh my disciple. Were they not each the image of a god of war; red of hair and skin like new-cast bronze. Each carried a long spear and a well-honed sword at his hip, and they rode on chariots while their men drove the long-horned cattle behind them. Were not these the names of the sons of Arius: Hit, Cadmu, Persis, Ind, and Hy? Do I not know what the sons of Arius did at the great banquet they made on the day that they defeated the people of the two rivers?" "Know then, oh my disciple, that I saw it all. They made a great banquet upon the plain and each drank from the skull of a prince of Ur. There they slaughtered untold numb...